This article is designed to provide an overview of the project lifecycle. While this guide is not meant to be comprehensive, it does include links to individual articles providing more detailed explanations on how to use specific features. Be sure to review these articles as well when setting up your panel for the first time. Project managers who will be responsible for sampling, launching surveys, and email campaign management will gain the most from this guide.

1: Setup

Panel projects allow the user to launch a survey to a specific panel sample. The very first step in this process is to navigate to Project Mode and create a new project. You will first be asked to define the Project Properties. Three types of projects may be set up:

Kinesis Integrated Project
Used for surveys programmed on the user's Kinesis Survey installation. Simply use the "Link to survey" drop down to select the survey you would like to invite panelists to.

Fulcrum Integrated Project
If Fulcrum is enabled and setup on the panel install, Fulcrum project integration can be enabled. Users can then enter a Fulcrum survey ID or select a survey from Offerwall or from their Allocations list.

External Survey Project
To invite users to a survey hosted on an installation other than Kinesis or Fulcrum, navigate to the Survey Settings tab. You can copy/paste the survey URL into the Survey URL text field. Be sure to retain the sesskey parameter on the end of the URL or Kinesis Panel will not be able to record panelist statuses and points.

Decipher Integrated Project
Used for surveys programmed on the user's Decipher installation. Simply use the "Link to a Decipher survey" drop down to select the survey you would like to invite panelists to.

Other settings are available under Project Properties and can be edited at any time. Review the project setup article for more details.

2.1: Creating Sample for Kinesis/Decipher and External Surveys

Once the project has been created and linked to a Kinesis or external survey, sample(s) must be created. Samples are project-specific and will not be available in other projects. There are two ways to create sample within a Kinesis or external survey project:

Query Tool
The query tool is used most often to pull sample and will always provide the most up-to-date counts regarding the number of panelists who meet your criteria. Once the query is created, use the "Save as Sample" button to create a sample containing all qualified respondents.

Import sample
The import sample tool can be used whenever the user knows up-front which panelists must be contacted for a project. This is usually used in the case of recontact studies. To use this tool, a list of emails or identifiers can be uploaded or pasted into the import tool. A sample will automatically be created based on the list provided.

Any sample created via the Query Builder or Import Sample tool will automatically be saved within the Sample Manager. Right-clicking on any sample name will bring up a menu with further options for editing and refining your sample. The options you should familiarize yourself with are Split Sample and Distribute Sample.

Splitting Sample
This allows you to split the sample into as many sub-groups as needed. Splitting the sample enables you to send to a subset of your total sample. This is used most often to split a sample into soft launch and full launch batches or to parse out invitations slowly so as to not invite too many panelists to a survey they will likely quota terminate from. Kinesis highly recommends splitting samples whenever possible. Not only does this provide you with more time to check your soft launch data before full launching, it also helps to prevent panel attrition by reducing the total number of survey invitations sent out to any one panelist.

Distribution Manager
This tool enables you to split a sample based on quota groups. This tool is most useful when working with a survey with many quotas, particularly nested quotas. The distribution tool allows you to specify the total quota, expected incidence rate, and expected response rate along with the totals needed within each quota group. The tool will then calculate how many panelists can be invited from your sample and will provide information on which quota groups cannot be filled. Distributed samples can be saved and will appear in the sample manager, where they can then be split into smaller subgroups if needed. Please keep in mind that all distributions are calculated off of existing panel datapoints. If your survey has a quota based on information not stored in your panel datapoints, the distribution tool cannot take that quota into account.

2.2: Creating a Campaign

The next step after pulling sample is to create the invitation that will be sent to panelists. This is done by going into New Campaign under the Invitations menu within your project.

2.2.1: Campaign Types

You will first need to select a campaign type. Four types are available:

Survey Invitations
This campaign type is used most often. It is designed to be used with typical surveys that respondents will complete once, though it is also flexible enough to be used with profiler surveys or any other survey that requires repeated completes from the same panelist.

Automated Invitations
This campaign type allows you to set up a survey launch that is triggered by respondent activity. The most common scenario is to send out a profiler survey invitation to new panelists who have completed the opt-in process. Less commonly, automated campaigns allow you to daisy-chain surveys together, allowing an invitation for Survey B to go out as soon as the panelist has completed Survey A. As with survey invitations, automated invitations are flexible enough to be used with profilers or standard survey launches.

Diary Invitation
This campaign type is designed to be used with diary surveys and has extra controls to specify how many invitations go out within a given time period and how many times a respondent is allowed to complete within that time period.

Profiler Invitation
This campaign type is very similar to Survey Invitations. The main difference is that the default properties are already set to allow multiple completes.

If you are using the built-in Kinesis Community, you have probably noticed that the Available Surveys page contains three tables by default: Available Surveys, Profiler Surveys, and Diary Surveys. These correspond to the campaign types listed above. If you have removed all tables except for Available Surveys, you will want to be sure to launch profilers using the Survey Invitation campaign type.

2.2.2: Properties, Scheduling, and Invitation Customization

Once you have selected the campaign type, the Campaign Wizard will walk you through a series of pages to get the campaign properly set up. Most items are self-explanatory, but more detail is provided on a few items below:

Campaign Properties
Campaign properties allow you to select whether or not the invitation should be published to the Community, along with specifying points and maximum participation. Please note that whatever points values are entered here will override any points values entered in the Panel Properties and Project Properties.

Survey Name
The survey name displays on the Community on the Available Surveys, Completed Surveys, and Rewards pages.

Scheduling
The scheduler allows you to select the initial launch time as well as an optional expiration time. Both times can be edited after finalization provided that the times have not passed. Please note that reminders are not scheduled here.

Invitation Customization
You will have the opportunity to select either a template (from the Invitation Template Manager) or an invitation from another project to use in your campaign. Your selected invitation can be fully edited from within the Campaign Wizard and will be saved for use in future projects.

Selecting Sample
You will have the opportunity to select the sample you would like the campaign to be sent to. Typically when setting up a campaign, you need only select your soft launch sample. Additional sample can be added to the campaign after the campaign has been finalized.

2.3: Campaign management

Once the campaign has been created, it will be found under the Campaign Manager. The campaign manager will display all samples included in your campaign along with the scheduled date and delivery, response, and completion rates.

Editing your Campaign
Campaigns can be edited via the Tools menu and by left-clicking the word Invitation (listed just above the sample). Campaigns can be rescheduled (provided that the scheduled time has not passed), and email invitations and survey descriptions can be edited at any time. Samples can be removed from campaigns by left-clicking the sample name.

Adding Sample
To add additional sample to your campaign, left-click the word Invitation (listed just above the sample) and select "Add sample to this campaign" from the drop down menu. You will be able to select from any available sample in the Sample Manager. You can always create more samples in the sample manager to add to your campaign as needed.

Sending Reminders
To send reminders, left-click the sample name and select the type of reminder you would like to send from the drop down menu. Reminders must be scheduled at least 24 hours after the initial launch.

Reporting
Reporting tools can be found under the Tools menu under View Statistics. This tool provides a breakdown of delivery rates and other campaign stats. If you are running a project with multiple campaigns, project statistics are available under the Data & Statistics menu. Project Statistics will provide delivery and response rates across all campaigns within your project.

Closing your project
Samples can be closed individually and projects can be closed. It is very important to close projects once they are done fielding so that they no longer display on the Available Surveys page of the Community.

2.4: URL pass through

It is sometimes necessary to pass panel data into a survey via the URL. This process is handled automatically via the panel/survey integrations if launching to a Kinesis-integrated project. To pass data through to an externally-hosted survey, you will want to append the datapoint variables onto the URL you create within the Survey Settings tab in Project Properties. This is as simple as adding an additional parameter onto the URL and using basic piping to pipe in the datapoint or system field.

Piping datapoints requires the following format: parametername=~Datapointlabel~
In this example, we are piping in gender and age datapoints:

To launch to a Fulcrum integrated project, you will need to set up a project as you normally would. However, instead of selecting the Kinesis survey or entering a survey URL, you will need to enable the Fulcrum integration within the project and then select what what method to use to send panelists into Fulcrum:

Survey number
Specify a Fulcrum survey number to send panelists to a specific survey

Launch to Fulcrum Exchange
This launches a targeted sample into the Exchange. Do not confuse this with the Fulcrum Exchange feature, which sends in untargeted sample.

Offerwall or Allocation
To select an Offerwall or Allocation survey, use the "Select Survey from list" option

3.1: Creating Sample for a Fulcrum-integrated Project

When creating a Fulcrum-integrated project, it is not necessary to first pull a sample before creating a campaign. Instead, you will need to create a campaign and add sample via one of the three options below. Please note that there is only one type of campaign available for Fulcrum integrated projects and only one campaign is allowed per project.

Qualifications and Quotas
Using this option will pull back sample based on qualifications and quotas. That is, the system will only invite those respondents who meet the criteria the supplier is looking for and will not send more invitations than the quotas allow for.

Qualifications Only
Using this option will pull back sample based on qualifications and quotas. That is, the system will only invite those respondents who meet the criteria the supplier is looking for.

Manual Sampling
If you do not wish to use the automatic sampling tools, you may pull sample as is normally done with a non-Fulcrum project. Sample can be created via the Query Builder or Import Sample tool and added to the campaign after it has been created. See Modify an Existing Campaign for instructions on how to add sample to a campaign. Please note that this is required if you are using the project to send targeted sample into the Exchange.

3.2: Campaign Management

As with non-Fulcrum surveys, all campaign management is handled through the Campaign Manager. All campaign and project reporting is available via the typical tools. Adding sample and sending reminders, however, are handled a bit differently.

Adding Additional Sample via the Automated Sampling Tool
If sample was created via the Automated Sampling tool, additional sample can be added by selecting the "Fulcrum Automated Sampling" button within the campaign manager. Simply increase the number of invitations to send out.

Adding Additional Manual Samples
To add manual samples, click Invitation in the Campaign Manager and select "Add sample to this campaign" from the drop down menu

Sending Reminders
To send reminders, left-click the sample name and select the type of reminder you would like to send from the drop down menu. Reminders must be scheduled at least 24 hours after the initial launch.

Reporting
Reporting tools can be found under the Tools menu under View Statistics. This tool provides a breakdown of delivery rates and other campaign stats. If you are running a project with multiple campaigns, project statistics are available under the Data & Statistics menu. Project Statistics will provide delivery and response rates across all campaigns within your project. Keep in mind that additional reporting can be found within Federated Sample's reporting tools.